Willis is by all accounts one of the biggest assholes in a profession filled with them. Calling it now, this is going to be like the Chevy Chase roast

The Chevy Chase roast in 2002 was the last of the Friars Club roasts televised by Comedy Central. From Denis Leary onwards, they've been produced for Comedy Central, who I doubt wants a repeat of the Chevy Chase roast, since they've apparently agreed to never re-air it. The big problem with that roast is that Chevy had burned so many bridges they could hardly get anyone who knew him personally, so the resulting show is just a bunch of young idiot comedians piling shit on him as he sits there stone faced for an hour (or more?). I seem to remember that it got old and uncomfortable very fast, and in fact, as I recall, the only memorable part was the appearance of Beverly D'Angelo, who I believe also made Chevy smile.

It's true that, thus far, a number of announced roasters don't appear to know Willis personally, but then there are also concessions, like "Rostmaster" Joseph Gordon-Levitt (?!) as well as comedians like Dom Irrera and Milton “Lil Rel” Howery, who have never been on these roasts before and seem likely to have been hand-picked by Comedy Central, or even by Willis or his management. Ross is clearly caught between being the "Rostmaster General" and becoming famous for being the "Roastmaster General", and the fact that he and Willis have already appeared in commercials for the Roast together is yet another sign that this will probably be pretty manufactured. I'm sure they'll be some dirty jokes, but I doubt most of the worst ones will be at Willis' expense. For all his DTV shlock in recent years, my bet is that Willis still has some powerful friends, and so I don't expect anyone will be too harsh on him, except perhaps Cybill.

Last edited by McCrutchy on Mon Jul 09, 2018 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Willis is friends with Irrera and Kevin Pollak who's scheduled to appear here as well. Edward Norton is going to be there too, no doubt in part because they're working together on Norton's next directorial effort.

Yeah, I knew Willis knew Levitt from Looper, Norton from Moonrise Kingdom and Pollak from The Whole Nine/Ten Yards so it's not unsurprising that he knows Irrera. In fact, it seems Comedy Central are taking their sweet time announcing the full list of roasters for this, which makes me feel like Willis is personally approving all of them.

What would really speak volumes is who doesn't show up. I bet they are trying hard to get Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson or William Atherton to make a Die Hard connection, or even Haley Joel Osment. I imagine that Kevin Smith might be out, which likely means Tracy Morgan is out, although I could see Willis consenting to Justin Long. I doubt Willis will consent to most of his co-stars from his "bad" movies from the 90s showing up, but you never know. I certainly can't see Goldie Hawn, Meyrl Streep, Richard Gere, Jeremy Irons, and the like showing up for a Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willis, but hopefully, favors were called in and they got Samuel L. Jackson to show up as a "surprise".

Is there anywhere online that collects Bruce Willis stories of him being a tremendous asshole? I mean I only know of the infamous Kevin Smith Die Hard experience and aside from that I never really heard other stories.

Judging by the Twitter response from people who were there and reported on it, about the only hiccup was Dennis Rodman who spent his time "apologizing for being an inexperienced speaker, misreading his teleprompter and then saying something off-script about how Bruce owes him money" according to one tweet. Otherwise it was described as being high-brow compared to past CC roasts, with lots of jabs at Weinstein and Trump.